“Good thing you did,” Emilio said. He patted the edge of the nightstand. “I’ll bet you hit your head on this when you fell.”
“Yes, that’s right. Ooo…” Her hand went to the laceration again — which was riding atop a good-sized lump — but Emilio gently stopped her before she touched it and risked further infection. “Where’s Toby?” she asked.
As if on cue, a dog could be heard galloping down a staircase toward the front of the house, then appeared in the hallway and began barking. Each note was a frantic shriek blended with the jingle of aluminum tags. Emilio heard Lewis say, “Hey there, little guy,” then watched as the door began to slowly open. Ellen Hart’s single housemate was a Maltese that weighed about a pound and a half. Its fur was unevenly black and white, and it had large round eyes that looked like oil spots.
No sooner had it taken stock of the situation than it rushed forward and clamped its teeth on Emilio’s pant cuff, grunting and growling as it tried to yank him backward.
Emilio chuckled, making no move to detach his attacker. “Hey, Toby, come on. Don’t you remember me?”
In a dreamy voice, Mrs. Hart said, “Toby, stop.”
Emilio turned back to her. “It’s okay, but I need to take a closer look at that boo-boo of yours.” He removed a pocket magnifier from his belt and leaned in. The wound was about three inches long and had ragged edges, as if a thin line of skin had been ripped free. “Hmm… it looks pretty nasty. It’s already begun to clot, which is good. But still, it’s fairly deep, and I’m concerned about secondary trauma. Here, look at me.”
She opened her eyes again, and he held up two fingers in the standard peace sign.
“How many?” he asked.
“Two.”
“Now how many?” he said, raising two more.
“Four.”
“Now?” He held up an open hand.
“All five.”
“And now?” He extended the thumb and pinky and turned his hand sideways. Hang ten, dude.
“Um, one. No… two again.”
“Okay, good. Now, just bear with me for a second…” He used a pencil flashlight to shine a beam into each of the old woman’s eyes, and her pupils dilated properly, if a little sluggishly. “I doubt you’ve sustained a concussion, but I’d rather not take a chance. Also, if I leave you here and you have another spell, you could suffer a much more serious injury, like while you’re going down the stairs. So I’m going to take you to the emergency room for some tests, if that’s okay.”
“Yes, fine.”
“All right. I’m going to get an ice pack and some bandages, then we’ll get you out of here.”
He turned to Toby, who was still attached.
“And you — I’ll be back in a second and you can continue with the alterations on my pants, okay?”
Toby released her grip as soon as she saw his hand coming toward her. Emilio scratched behind her ears before getting to his feet, fully expecting a nip in return. But she only looked at him perplexedly, no doubt wondering why a foe would make such an amiable gesture.
With Lewis trailing him down the hall, Emilio said, “She has a small to medium contusion on her forehead. She fell and struck the nightstand on the way down.”
“Ouch.”
“We have to cover it and put a pack on it to get the swelling down.”
“Right.”
“I want to take her to the hospital for some tests, so I need your help with the gurney.”
“You got it.”
They went back through the living room and took a sharp right into the kitchen, where Emilio stopped short and his subordinate nearly plowed into him. Rain was driving so ferociously against the curtain-framed window above the sink that it looked like the house was going through a car wash.
“What the hell?” Lewis said.
Emilio looked at the other window — the one above the radiator, facing the road — and saw the same thing. Then he backpedalled past his partner and returned to the living room because he had already noticed the acoustics were better in here. He could clearly hear the downpour on the roof; it sounded like a million tiny kettle drums being beaten by a million tiny natives. When he opened the door where they first came in, the storm’s volume increased exponentially. Then thunder blasted through the sky and lightning flickered as if connected to a bad fuse.
“My God… this all happened in the last fifteen minutes?” Lewis asked.
“I guess so.”
Out on the stoop, the sweet, frenzied scent of electricity hung heavily. Lightning struck again — this time quite close — accompanied by another thunderous report.
“It’s like someone turned the volume knob up to ten,” Lewis said.
“Twenty.”
“Yeah.”
Emilio shook his head. “Well, here goes…”
The rain on his skin hurt like mad, more like little pebbles than drops of water. The wind drove it in a nearly horizontal direction, spraying water into his face and up his nose. He opened the rear doors of the ambulance — one immediately blew shut again and smacked him on the side — and piled the ice pack and bandages onto the gurney, which he then covered with a sheet of opaque plastic. Lewis came out and helped him wheel it inside. The rain hitting the plastic sounded like applause from a crowd of thousands.
They got a blanket under Mrs. Hart and lifted her together. Once the bandages were in place, Emilio lay an ice pack over the contusion and asked her to hold it there. Covering her with a second blanket, they began rolling the gurney through the house. Toby jumped and barked around their feet, alarmed and confused.
Emilio stopped. “We can’t leave her here.”
“What?” Lewis asked, looking perplexed.
“The dog. We can’t leave her here in the storm.” Then, to his patient, “She’ll be scared, won’t she, Mrs. Hart?”
She nodded. “Lightning and thunder frighten her very much.”
“That’s what I thought. Okay, then…”
He scooped Toby up while she wiggled and squirmed, and set her on the gurney next to her mistress. She snuggled down without further protest, though her eyes were still bright with terror.
“Allison’s the resident physician in the ER today,” Lewis said, nodding toward the dog, “and she’s not going to like that.”
“Tough luck for her,” Emilio replied and began pushing again.
When they got to the door, they pulled up the rails and stretched the plastic sheet over the top of the gurney and its passengers, which reduced them to hazy images underneath. Racing through the pounding rain, they were in the ambulance in seconds. Lewis remained in the back while Emilio hopped into the driver’s seat, grimacing at the feeling of his shirt sticking to him like a superfluous layer of grimy, loosened skin. It was soaked to the point where his crewneck undershirt had become clearly visible.
Back on the road, the windshield wipers did their best to throw aside the downpour. On Falls View Avenue, Emilio had to navigate around a large maple tree that had split in half. In spite of the rain, there was smoke drifting from the spot where lightning had nailed it. One side was lying on the pavement; the other was leaning against the power lines, which were stretched as tight as guitar strings. A sickened feeling rose inside him at the sight of this. Things are breaking down, he thought. The infrastructure of the town. Something very basic. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but there was something not-right about it. Depression was beginning to seep into him.
He called the police to let them know about the tree, and considered phoning Sarah. He was hesitant because he knew how busy she could be on an ordinary day, and this one was anything but ordinary. He also knew how much her work meant to her. But then speaking with her always soothed him.